The present invention relates to a device for determining the toll for a vehicle travelling over a route section.
Systems for collecting such a toll are recently becoming more important, particularly for cars travelling on roads. In some countries, a "vignette" system is used, for example for highways, which provides for the charging of a fixed annual amount independently of the degree of usage. In contrast, in the so-called "Maut" system, which is used, in particular, for expensive highway sections, for example roads through mountain passes or tunnels, a fee is only charged for the actual use in each case.
Known Maut systems in which the road toll is only charged usage-dependently for travelling on the chargeable road section require roadside facilities as system components. Thus, a Maut system disclosed in German Patent Document 38 30 643 A1 contains a roadside base station with computer unit and suitable barrier arrangements at the Maut boundaries.
Roadside detector devices within a Maut section of a particular length are also provided in the Maut system known from German Patent Document 41 12 472 A1. In addition to those detectors used for location detection at the Maut boundaries, a number of other detectors are used there for detecting the respective vehicle speed, significant deviations from a reference speed value leading to an increase in the Maut toll.
Another Maut system in which a vehicle-borne station and a base station installed at the roadside exchange coded information for Maut toll charging purposes is mentioned in German Patent Document 40 39 887 A1. In this system, a first roadside transmitter which is mounted, for example, on a beacon, is provided which, after the entry of the vehicle into the Maut zone has been detected, transmits signals to the vehicle station which determine the amount of Maut toll. A second roadside transmitter which is mounted, for example, on another beacon receives an acknowledgement message from the vehicle station and checks that the toll has been paid.
Because of the necessity of barrier facilities at the Maut boundaries, the known Maut systems are mainly suitable for charging a road toll for sufficiently closed road sections in which it is not possible to bypass the detector or pay stations at the Maut boundaries. When there are many branches in the section, this becomes correspondingly expensive since a correspondingly large number of roadside facilities is required.
Taxi meters such as are used, for example, in taxis, are known for determining a distance-dependent fee for using a vehicle. Such taxi meters which primarily determine the fare in dependence on the distance travelled and possible waiting times are described for example, in German Patent Document 40 23 110 A1 and German Patent Document 25 12 954 C3. Taxi meters as such are not suitable for determining a road toll since they do not register the variables primarily influencing this toll such as, for example, the type of road used.
From European Patent 0 387 474 A2, it is known to have the fare determined by a taxi meter debited from a user-owned credit card.
The prior art also includes vehicle-borne facilities for determining the position of the vehicle with the aid of satellite signals, see, for example, German Patent Document 41 30 367 A1. To be able to reproduce the position of the vehicle within a road map which can be visibly displayed in the vehicle, it is known from German Patent Document 40 33 527 A1 to combine such a vehicle position detector with an electronically stored road map, by means of which an evaluating unit determines the vehicle position on the road map by means of comparison of the respective data.
An object of the present invention is to provide a device for determining the accrued toll for a vehicle travelling over a route section, by means of which it is possible to determine the toll vehicle-autonomously without stationary roadside facilities and for any road sections of a road network travelled on.
This and other objects are achieved by the present invention which provides a device for determining a toll for a vehicle travelling over a road section, comprising vehicle-carried means for determining the position of the vehicle, and a vehicle-carried road storage device in which data of at least one entire toll-chargeable road network with associated road toll parameters are electronically stored, an individual road toll parameter being associated with a particular road section of the road network and representing a proportional road toll due for the use of this section. A vehicle-carried computer unit is connected to the road storage device and the means for determining the position. The computer unit determines the toll due for the use of the route sections travelled by the vehicle at least from the data of the means determining the position and the road storage device.
Each chargeable road section of a total road network stored in a vehicle-borne electronic storage device is associated with a section toll parameter which represents the proportional toll due for this section. The present invention allows the toll to be determined for the case of a general charge for the entire road network accessible to a vehicle which is then stored as a whole together with the associated road toll parameters. It also allows for cases of only partial charging, for example only for motorways, expensive road sections or roads located within particular country or city boundaries. In such cases, the present invention makes it possible to store only the chargeable roads in the road network together with the associated road toll parameters, or to store a larger network, for example the entire accessible road network and to allocate the road toll parameter value for a toll of "zero" to the non-chargeable road sections.
Corresponding to the density of the stored road network, the means for determining the position of the vehicle have an adequate local resolution which allows an unambiguous correlation of the road section travelled with the individual, possibly directly adjacent road sections of the stored road network. Depending on the accuracy required, the use of a satellite-based position determining system and/or other vehicle-carried devices such as, for example, wheel tachometers, direction sensors or digital maps, is provided for this purpose.
In an embodiment of the invention, the stored data of the road network and/or the road toll parameters can be updated in that the new data are received by a receiver unit, for example a radio or mobile radio receiver and are newly stored in the memory of the storage device via an input unit. This allows flexible adaptation of the system to changing tolls for the respective road sections.
In another embodiment of the invention, a storage device is arranged in which environmental toll parameters are stored which influence the toll, in addition to the road toll parameters, in dependence on the surrounding vehicle situation such as, for example, the traffic density or the pollution level. The data for the time-dependent environmental toll parameters are preferably overwritable, for which purpose the memory is preceded by a receiver unit and an input unit.
In another embodiment of the invention, a storage device is provided in which vehicle- and/or trip-specific toll parameters also influencing the toll are stored such as, for example, the loading, the travelling speed or the axle load. For the registration and possible updating of these vehicle toll parameters, the memory is preferably preceded by suitable sensors and an input unit for writing into the memory data obtained by the sensors or otherwise input.
In certain embodiments, the computer unit determines an instantaneous road toll for the road section currently travelled from the data extracted from the memories and the signals of the position determining means and reproduces this toll on a visual display device.
In certain embodiments of the invention, the computer unit adds together the proportional tolls previously accrued from a starting point to form a total toll and outputs them on a visual display unit and/or supplies this value for the total toll to a debiting unit into which a user card can be inserted from which the toll is automatically debited.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.